Origins: What Influences Scott Pilgrim Director Edgar Wright

It isn’t every day you get to interview someone like Edgar Wright – someone so interesting, insightful, inspired. This guy clearly loves movies. He loves to watch them, to make them, to think about them, to talk about them. And after spending 45 minutes on the phone with him, I can already tell: This is the kind of dude you want to sit next to at a film festival.

That’s not something that can be said for every filmmaker. Many are interested in the business, not the art. They give canned answers while making easy-to-digest blockbusters. They kind of look down on all us paeans, who worship at the altar of Cinema.

But anyway: Wright is the guy who made both the hilarious accidental zombie thriller “Shaun of the Dead,” and the sleepy suburb bloodbath “Hot Fuzz.” Now he’s made “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” another mishmash of a comedy, poised somewhere between weepy romantic melodrama and rock em-sock em epic hero quest. It’s a crazy, crazy movie, and I was desperate to talk to him about it – to find out just what it is about mixing genres, and going for broke, that has fueled his career. What movies have served as inspirations for him? Where did he get this passion for magical realism? Is he as crazy in person as his films would suggest?

So I asked him. And he told me. And this is the video of that conversation. Enjoy!